Documentary of a Harlem drug kingpin & his heroin

October, the time of the harvest moon, is yielding a bumper crop of movies about Harlem gangsters.

Or a "Bumpy" crop — two movies and a TV show about the heirs to the turf of legendary Harlem gangster Bumpy Johnson, whose death left a power void filled by ruthless heroin dealers Frank Lucas and Leroy "Nicky" Barnes in the freewheeling (and free dealing) 1970s.

First up is "Mr. Untouchable," produced by Harlem native Damon Dash. It features an extended interview with the notorious Barnes, who turned state's evidence after a drug conviction and is now in the witness protection program while associates languish in prison.

Barnes is photographed in shadow, and talks while the camera takes note of his expensive wristwatch and rings as his fingers drum atop stacks of money. It's not clear whether the money or the bullets actually belong to Barnes — more likely they are mere props. Director Mark Levin needs to show us something while Barnes talks, and these items are certainly central to Barnes' life.

"Mr. Untouchable" recounts Barnes' history as founder and leader of "The Council" — organized African-American underworld figures who controlled the rackets in the 1960s and 1970s.

Barnes was a street kid and former addict who didn't rise above his environment, but found a way to make it work for him — as a Barnes associate puts it, the American Dream was somewhere over a 10-foot wall, and all they had was a six-foot ladder.

Barnes learned to make money by taking small amounts of heroin and cutting it for resale, a technique that he expanded from corners to streets to neighborhoods, until he ran a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

The bloody vacuum left by Johnson's demise prompted open warfare on the Harlem streets — Barnes brought about a degree of order by organizing dealers and enforcers into The Council, the black-market chamber of commerce that prospered via the drug trade.

"Mr. Untouchable" shows how Barnes' money and power made him a Harlem celebrity, without discounting the horrifying toll that his trafficking exacted on the neighborhood he "served."

It wasn't heroin's terrible toll on Harlem's population, however, that doomed Barnes. It was a New York Times piece illustrated with a giant picture of a decked-out Barnes. The headline: "Mr. Untouchable."

In one hilarious aside, a Barnes associate notes ruefully that it's one thing for a black man to control the Harlem drug trade. It's quite another to go on the front page of the Times magazine and say "nya nya nya nya nya."

President Jimmy Carter saw the article, and dispatched a federal task force to target Barnes and his organization. The feds, along with Barnes' own hubris, brought him down.

"Mr. Untouchable" devotes its final third to the idea that Barnes, guilty of being a death-dealing pusher whose plague of drugs nearly destroyed Harlem, was also something just as bad — a snitch.

That's morally debatable, but keep in mind: This is a movie about Barnes' world and, in it, turning on your "friends" is a special kind of crime.

And in any event, the movie states in definitive and clear-eyed terms that there is no honor among thieves, just thieves, and that a thief is ultimately a corpse, an inmate or a rat.

You get a more expansive/fulsome notion of gangsterism in "American Gangster," due next week and starring Denzel Washington as Barnes rival Frank Lucas. Also, BET is rerunning a short Lucas documentary next week, also titled "American Gangster." *

Documentary produced by Damon Dash, Alex Gibney, Jason Kliot, Mary-Jane Robinson and Joana Vicente, directed by Mark Levin, music by Hi-Tek, distributed by Magnolia Pictures.